When watching a program or a commercial being broadcast in a conventional television broadcasting, a viewer may wish to obtain a thing appearing in the program or the commercial or an object such as a piece of music played in the program or the commercial.
In such cases, first, the viewer connects a PC (personal computer) to the Internet, searches for information on these objects on the Internet, and obtains information on the target objects.
Then, based on the obtained information, the viewer contacts or goes to a shop selling the objects, and purchases the objects. Conventionally, viewers purchase objects appearing in programs and commercials by such a process.
On the other hand, while video and audio are normally broadcast as programs and commercials in television broadcasting, there is a broadcasting form such that not only video and audio are broadcast as programs and commercials but also data broadcasting is performed to broadcast, as data, additional information on objects appearing in the programs and commercials.
When broadcasting is performed in such a broadcasting form, it is necessary to previously associate the additional information being broadcast as data with objects appearing in programs and commercials. And when video and audio of programs and commercials are broadcast, it is necessary that the additional information previously associated with the objects be broadcast as data broadcasting so as to synchronize with the video and audio.
Conventionally, to associate the additional information being broadcast as data broadcasting with objects appearing in a program or a commercial, after creating the video and audio of the program or the commercial, the producer of the program or the commercial associates the additional information with each scene while checking the scenes of the video and audio. As described above, the association of the additional information being broadcast as data broadcasting with objects appearing in a program or a commercial is performed by hand by the producer.
However, for a viewer to obtain an object appearing in a program or a commercial being broadcast, it is necessary to connect to the Internet from a PC completely irrespective of reception of the broadcast, download information on the target object through the Internet and order the object by telephone or the like based on the downloaded information, which is inconvenient.
That is, it has been an object in the conventional broadcasting that obtaining objects appearing in programs and commercials being broadcast cannot be easily performed and requires time and trouble, which is inconvenient.
On the other hand, while video and audio are normally broadcast as programs and commercials in television broadcasting, to perform broadcasting in the broadcasting form such that not only video and audio are broadcast as programs and commercials but also data broadcasting is performed to broadcast, as data, additional information on objects appearing in the programs and commercials, the association of the program additional information requires a great deal of labor of the producers, so that it is difficult to provide sufficient additional information.
That is, it is an object that when not only the video and audio of programs and commercials are broadcast but also additional information on objects appearing in the programs and commercials is broadcast as data broadcasting, since it is necessary to previously perform the association of the program additional information and the association requires a great deal of labor, it is difficult to provide sufficient additional information.